On Media

The stoning of Uber's Emil Michael

By DYLAN BYERS

11/19/2014 02:18 PM EST

Last week, an Uber executive named Emil Michael went to a dinner with colleagues, journalists and various media celebrities where, in a conversation with BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith that Michael thought was off the record, he floated the idea of hiring journalists to investigate the company's critics.

The idea was unsavory, to say the least — it seemed immoral, legally dubious, un-American, etc. — but it was also just that: an idea. Uber doesn't employ any journalists tasked with such an assignment, nor, according to what Smith wrote, does it have any plans to. Michael Wolff, the media columnist who invited Smith to the dinner, wrote today that it may very well have been "a half-bottle of wine rant."

Wolff also notes that Smith did little to test Michael's story: "Uber's CEO was there and taking questions. Smith could have confronted him. But that would have complicated the story," Wolff writes. "Or instead of labeling Michael's remarks in such OMG, shock-shocked, clickbait fashion, Smith, or a more skillful writer, might have located them with greater precision on the broader spectrum of meaning and emotion. After all, how likely is it that a company planning to investigate reporters is going to divulge this to a reporter, even in an off-the-record conversation?"

Instead, Smith wrote a report, published Monday, titled "Uber Executive Suggests Digging Up Dirt On Journalists." The piece, and its attendant outrage, spread like wildfire and quickly became the latest evidence that Uber was run by thin-skinned, cold-hearted capitalists who had no regard for personal privacy (a more recent report suggests that there are legitimate concerns on the privacy front). Almost every news organization of note, from The New York Times to The New York Post, picked up Smith's report and republished the information, without skepticism. At Vox, Matt Yglesias wrote that Uber "has an asshole problem."

In the afternoon, Travis Kalanick, Uber’s chief executive, went on Twitter and posted an apology. He said that "Emil's comments at the recent dinner party were terrible and do not represent the company," but he noted that "folks who make mistakes can learn from them."

For many journalists, this wasn't enough. They wanted Michael's head to roll. Ken Lerer, BuzzFeed's chairman, went on Twitter and wrote that, "If Uber were a publicly held company, this Uber exec would be gone already." Several reports on the apology also noted that Kalanick had not fired Michael, an observation that implies the belief that such drastic action is in order. The headline at Recode: "Uber CEO Travis Kalanick Calls Employee’s Smear Campaign Remarks 'Terrible' — But Not Terrible Enough to Fire Him."

Few are sympathetic to Uber — understandably so. The Times' Farhad Manjoo has an excellent front-page story today detailing various criticisms of the company's unseemly behavior, from its disregard for complaints of sexual assault by drivers to drivers protesting wages and working conditions to the company's aggressive campaign to recruit drivers from Lyft, a competitor. It may be that Uber is guilty of all sorts of immoral, legally dubious activity. For all I know, Uber may be the devil incarnate, here to provide low-cost transportation to the ninth circle of hell.

That said, it's troubling to watch the digital lynch mob on Twitter promote the idea that a man should be fired from his job because he floated an idea, however unsavory, over dinner. Yes, it is frightening to think that an executive at a powerful company entertains the idea of investigating journalists. But it is also frightening that many journalists who rely on the freedom of speech think someone should be fired because he said something crazy at the Waverly Inn on a Friday night.

Full disclosure: I worked for Michael Wolff at Adweek in 2011 and for Ben Smith at POLITICO in 2011-2012.